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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28529913">when i was 9 i was a hardened criminal (and it only escalated from there)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellarOwl/pseuds/StellarOwl'>StellarOwl</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Backstory, Gen, I just wanted to write backstory for Technoblade, IDK how much of my writing qualifies as what, There will probably be multiple chapters but not many, angst (maybe), fluff (maybe)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:28:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,513</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28529913</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellarOwl/pseuds/StellarOwl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Technoblade backstory, incorporating Skywars and Antarctic Empire.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Technoblade &amp; Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>40</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. When Pigs Fly (They Don't)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>"You guys know that feeling when you go into the kitchen to get a snack, and you see something in your peripheral vision- not quite sure what it is, but it's probably just a toy your sister left out while she was playing. And then like, you start to get your snack, and you look over at the toy, and it's literally a baby. Just on the floor in your kitchen. And you don't know whose baby it is or how it got there, and you have no idea what to do?"</p><p>--Technoblade, Solo Skywars #7</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>               Honestly, some random person's kitchen floor would have been a much better place for a baby to randomly appear. Any place would have been better than the Sky Islands, really, except maybe the nether. And there was a good chance the baby had come <em>from</em> the nether, so that probably wouldn't have been such a bad environment for him to appear in, either. But, no. Somehow, out of the blue, he appeared on one of the Sky Islands.</p><p>              He wasn't technically a baby. More like, just a little kid, which helped. It meant that he could at least do some things for himself, which was necessary, because people expected a lot out of him. Not because they expected him to be a great warrior, or something, but because they needed him to be. When this piglin kid appeared out of nowhere on a grassy hill floating in the sky, the other inhabitants of that particular island adopted him instantly as a member of their "team". He learned pretty quickly that they were at war with several other islands at the same time, and that it had basically always been that way, and that every member of the team needed to play their part. They'd protect him alright, because he was from their island and therefore on their side, but he could tell they resented his lack of knowledge about how to do things. ("Nobody wants a noob on their team," he'd heard one of them say. "More people on our team is a good thing, regardless of skill level," someone else answered back. "I just can't understand," another said, "how someone could not know these basic things.") So, he'd tried his best to get better at everything he could: enchanting, crafting armor, fighting, parkour. But he could never really work well with his team (later, he'd figure it was probably because they didn't actually respect each other), and eventually, he decided the best thing to do was to run away.</p><p>             He wasn't going to run away to any of the other teams. They already knew him as part of the Spruce gang, and would probably kill him on sight. Besides, he was hurting his former team enough by depriving them of a member; he didn't want to turn the odds against them even more. He didn't respect them, but he didn't really resent them, either. As far as he was concerned, they just didn't "click". So, he went solo.</p><p>             Getting away was the hardest part. He stole only the armor that he had made (which was pretty decent armor anyway: iron all over, except for a half-broken gold helmet that looked more like a lopsided crown at this point), and any tools that the Spruce team had let him have, and started running in the middle of the night. He kept running for quite a while, making a lot of risky jumps and hoping to get as far as he could before day came. When the sun finally rose over the islands, he didn't know how far he'd come or which way he'd need to go to get back, but he told himself that it didn't matter. And for some reason that only made sense to the small piglin, he decided that this abandoned island he found himself on when the sun rose, was where he would make his new home.</p><p>             Not that that decision really mattered much, in the end. Yes, he made his base in the ruins of someone else's, but there was only a limited supply of resources there. He needed to venture out to collect more. So that's what he did. Splashing himself with a strength potion, he grabbed his iron sword and half a stack of spruce planks (he'd used the other half to fix up his shelter) and started sprinting for a larger island. He built about half a bridge before getting impatient and using it as a diving board instead, to propel himself across the rest of the gap. He found a chest hidden behind a tree with coal and wheat in it (what the heck was he supposed to do with wheat?), and another with some shiny blue-green things in it- diamonds? No, they were too round to be diamonds. <em>Ender pearls.</em> They'd never trusted him with ender pearls, but now he would finally get to use them! He shoved most of them into his bag, but grabbed one and threw it hard, like a baseball, towards another chest a ways away.</p><p>             What he'd failed to notice, though, was that someone else had been approaching the same chest, and they weren't too happy about some little pink <em>runt </em>getting to the treasure before them. Fortunately for the kid, Piglins instinctively attack when they're startled, and he still had the potion of strength on him. He punched the other treasure-hunter in the chest with enough force to dent his chestplate. Unfortunately, this meant that as soon as they recovered from the shock of being hit by an elementrary-schooler that punched like a golem, the other treasure hunter pulled out their diamond sword and started fighting back.</p><p>             The piglin took a blow to his chestplate and another that cut through the tip of one of his large ears. He dodged backwards, avoiding anything more serious, and realizing that for the first time, he wouldn't have anyone else to save him if he messed up. He'd need to be extra careful. Still retreating, with the other fighter still approaching him, he reached into his bag and grabbed another ender pearl. He chucked it over the guy's head and quickly snatched up his iron sword, watching as the enemy came closer and the pearl fell to the ground.</p><p>             There was a soft "vwoop" noise and the scenery around him changed. He spun around and began sprinting at his opponent, swinging his sword wildly. He got three hits in before the other managed to turn around, and two more before they regained their balance enough to properly counterattack. Even so, their chestplate was near breaking, and it only took a couple more vicious attacks before the iron broke and the piglin was able to drive his sword right through them.</p><p>             "STRENGTH!" He cheered.</p><p>             The treasure-hunter's remaining armor clattered to the ground as they despawned, along with the rest of their inventory. The piglin couldn't help stopping and staring for a moment, before sorting through the loot. He had done that, all by himself, without anyone else supporting him. He really didn't need a team, he thought. Maybe he was better at fighting solo.</p><p>             He grabbed the dead fighter's diamond helmet and swapped it out for his beat-up golden one, although he didn't throw the golden helmet out. Maybe it was foolish and un-strategic, but he thought it was pretty. He shoved it down to the bottom of his bag, so that it wouldn't get in the way. He also grabbed the iron leggings, as his own pants were starting to get worn out. Pants were an essential piece of armor.</p><p>             "Never want to run out of pants," he mused to himself. "If you run out of pants, anyone can take you down. Chestplates, too, but everyone already knows about the chestplates. They always forget about the pants."</p><p>             When he found an anvil, he wasted no time in re-shaping his old, broken helmet into a golden crown, small enough to fit underneath his new helmet and make it fit better, as it was too big for him. He thought it looked pretty neat when he wasn't wearing a helmet, too.</p><p>             This was how his life went for a while, only really venturing out for supplies when he needed them, but as time went on, he became more practiced in solo-fighting and collected better gear (mostly off of people he'd killed), and he became more confident. He started seeking conflict, going out to other bases where fighters would be caught off-guard, and where they hid more of their loot. (Most of these others were runaways like him, and maybe some of them had appeared out of nowhere as well. Orphans. But this didn't make him feel guilty about killing them. In fact, he reasoned, because they shared his "semi-tragic" -as he called it- backstory, that just evened the playing field. They were like him, so that just made it <em>more fair</em> to fight them.)</p><p>             It was about this time that he started hearing the voices. At first, there were only one or two of them, and they never showed up while he was fighting, only after the fact. They sounded hesitant, almost, but they were always either positive, or just plain bizarre. They said things like, "You live in an airport" and "I saw you yesterday" and "Please do more fighting" and "You are awesome!" The first time it happened, he immediately grabbed his diamond sword and started looking around for who was saying them, thinking it was an enemy. He spent way too long looking around for the source of the voices, before determining that they had no real source. It was a little worrying, but he didn't have anything to compare it to, so it was only worrying in the sense that it was entirely new and he didn't know how to deal with it. And they seemed friendly enough, even if they were a little odd.</p><p>             He started talking out loud more as he fought, just in case the voices could hear him. They still never responded until after the fact, but it was clear that they had been watching- or listening, or whatever- and they responded to what he had said. They liked to hear him talk, but even more, they liked to see him fight. He was one of the best fighters they'd ever seen, apparently. And he liked showing off for them. After coming home from battle, he'd sit down, re-enchant his gear, and listen to them all cheering and arguing and shouting "First!" and "Why do I never get bulldozer" and "Can't stop the blade." He decided that maybe that should be his name. "Blade." It had a nice ring to it.</p><p>             "Nerrrrrrd!" Blade shouted as he sniped an iron-armor fighter off of the bridge they were making. He wasn't quite sure what "nerd" meant, but to him, it meant "someone who was currently losing," which perfectly described the person falling off of the bridge. He threw some junk out of his inventory, speed-reorganizing and replacing some of his armor, then ran up a flight of stairs to find another fighter, full diamond armor, partially enchanted. This one was a pretty decent fighter, but she didn't know how to handle a loss. She called him a "noob" as he kicked her off the side of a building, which wasn't really applicable. If he was a noob, how had he beaten her? But he wasn't bothered. He looked like a noob, probably. He was still shorter than most of his opponents.</p><p>             Someone came up behind him. That was one of the issues with talking while fighting: even with his big ears, the sound of his own voice made it harder to hear the people around him. This person caught him off guard, but it wasn't that much of a big deal to him- the guy barely had armor compared to him. Mostly diamond plus some iron leggings were nothing compared to full diamond with enchants. (This armor was low on durability, but it would last for a couple more fights at least.) Even so, he needed to step back a little so he'd have enough room to move around, and he stepped back and fell out the same window he had shoved his previous opponent through.</p><p>             He panicked and reached as he fell, grabbing hold of and tearing his opponent's cape. Without thinking, he shoved the torn cape into his inventory, switching it out for an ender pearl, which he threw as hard as he could in the other direction. This, however, turned out to be a big mistake, because the pearl didn't hit the ground. Instead, it hit the side of another island, which meant <em>Blade</em> hit the side of another island, and, following the usual laws of gravity that apply to living things, fell.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. His Name is Philza Minecraft and He is Quite Old</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>"I have thirteen enderpearls. I can conquer the world in no time flat."<br/>-Technoblade, Skywars episode "california is a crazy place"</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>               He landed hard on some sort of ground, hard enough to break his enchanted armor but not his bones. That was one good thing. He was kind of dazed though, and it took him a moment to figure out what the fluffy white stuff he was laying in was. It was snow, he had seen snow before, but in much smaller quantities. Never as much as this.</p><p>
  <em>               Is this where they make the snow? Is this where it all comes from? Wait, no. I'm pretty sure snow falls. So this must be where all the leftover snow goes.</em>
</p><p>               All that snow must have been what was making it so cold. Even the taiga islands hadn't been like this. He wrapped the torn cloak he had stolen from that one sneaky guy around his shoulders. He didn't like that he needed one hand to hold it there, it made him feel more vulnerable. Less ready to fight. So he took a moment and sorted through his stuff, until he found a flint and steel. He shoved the curved piece of steel through the fabric, hooking the two corners together. It was <em>his</em> cape, now. <em>Take that, Sneaky. </em>He put the flint back into his bag. With both hands free to swing weapons and keep his balance, Blade ventured out into the rest of this lower-world.</p><p>               There was a lot more walking to be done here than there ever had been up there, to get a change of scenery. It was snowy and icy all around, and as he moved forward, the snow and ice appeared in new and interesting shapes, but that's all it was. Snow and ice. No wood or cobblestone, the two main indicators of shelters. No chests. He figured he should have reached the edge at some point, but he never did. Wherever he was, was even bigger than a central island. Eventually, he found something: A structure made of wool. Probably remnants of a battle where someone had tried to get away by stacking and failed. Nobody was there right then, but they had been. And where there were people, there was loot and there was action. And there were mines and buildings, once he conquered them. Those would be great for keeping out the cold. The cape wasn't helping as much as he thought it would.</p><p>               Something moved behind the wool structure- no, wait. Someone was coming out from <em>inside</em> the wool structure. <em>A wool building?</em> Didn't seem like a very solid defense plan. Well, he'd take what he could get, and if it was a noob in a base made of wool, that was better than nothing.</p><p>               The noob had smooth, black-and-white diamond-patterned wings laying against his back. Blade had seen a few people with wings before, but they were rare, and he had heard people say bad things about them. That they were cheating, somehow. That they didn't fight fair. Well, it should cancel out with him being a noob then, right? Should give him a pretty good fight. He put on some iron armor- <em>holy cow that made the cold worse- </em>swapped it out for a crummy leather chestplate he'd forgotten to throw out, grabbed his diamond sword, which fortunately hadn't broken in the fall, and charged.</p><p>              The noob blocked the attack smoothly with a diamond sword, then his black-and-white elytra lifted up, momentarily revealing his real, see-through purple wings underneath as he fluttered backwards and landed on an ice structure, just out of reach. A fairly easy problem to solve. Blade threw an enderpearl at the top of the ice spike, and then <em>he</em> had the high ground. But then the winged noob jumped backwards again, back onto the ground, and remained out of reach. He aimed an arrow. Perhaps he wasn't as much of a noob as Blade had assumed.</p><p>              "You're clearly real good at this man, so why do you just live in wool? Bad defense." He raised a shield to block the arrow.</p><p>              "You tried to kill me out of nowhere, I don't think you get to question my methods, mate." The winged fighter answered, trying to sneak around and get a better angle for shooting.</p><p>              "Wow, talking? That's pretty rare. Usually people don't talk back when I'm killing them." Blade was getting impatient with just waiting out the arrows. He jumped down to the lower part of the ice spike and then to the ground, brandishing his sword threateningly.</p><p>              "You're not killing me. You haven't even managed to land a hit."</p><p>              "Well you're not killing me either. Nothing you've tried to do has worked, except for your wing things, cheater. That's cheating, right?"</p><p>              "Cheating? I'm- this is what happens when you kill a dragon." The winged guy actually stopped aiming for a moment to gesture to his wings, and Blade took that opportunity to charge. The winged guy switched quickly back to his sword and barely blocked in time, then attacked in return, suddenly and quickly. Blade wasn't ready and couldn't block it, and only barely managed to dodge out of the way.</p><p>              "Why are you trying to kill me, anyway?" The winged stranger asked. <em>What a weird question.</em></p><p>              "I don't know. They want to see it. And besides, what else would I do, not fight? Leave myself an open target? Ha. Not gonna happen." The winged guy took a moment to fly backwards again, out of range, and aimed his bow before speaking.</p><p>              "What do you mean by 'They want to see it'?"</p><p>              "The, uh..." He'd never had to come up with a name for them before, since he'd never told anyone about them. He'd never talked to anyone about anything, really, in quite a while.</p><p>              "The commenters. They like to see me fight."</p><p>              "Are they... voices?" The winged man was approaching slowly, crouched, his arrow still aimed, even though he totally could have hit from that distance. Weirdo.</p><p>              "Yeah."</p><p>              "Do they give you weird nicknames? Tell you to kill things?" The stranger's bow was lowering now, but Blade didn't doubt that he could snap it back into position and shoot in an instant if he made any sudden movement. So, he stayed still. (Of course, he could handle it if the guy started shooting again. But this was starting to get interesting, and he kind of wanted to see what would happen.)</p><p>              "I mean, I'd kill even if they didn't tell me to, but yeah. They do the nicknames, too. That's how I got my name. Blade."</p><p>              "Pretty on-the-nose, aren't they? Mine call me Killza." The man shrugged, putting away his weapon. Blade noticed that he had also lowered his sword without realizing. But it wasn't that big of a deal: for whatever absurd reason, this guy didn't seem interested in attacking anymore. "My real name's Philza, or just Phil."</p><p>              "Uh, okay. Not sure what to do with that knowledge."</p><p>              "Well, usually, you'd say 'nice to meet you, Phil'." Phil laughed a little.</p><p>              "Yeah, it is kind of nice," Blade answered.</p><hr/><p>              "Shame I'm going to have to kill you eventually. I'll save you for last."</p><p>              "Oh, who else are you planning to kill?" Philza asked, struggling to keep his tone neutral. Blade, as he was called, was the only other person Phil had met who could hear the voices. Phil knew from experience how hard they could be to rein in. And if- as it seemed- all this piglin knew was fighting, it would probably be worse for him.</p><p>              "I don't know. Whoever gets in my way."</p><p>              "Are you like, conquering the world?"</p><p>              "I've got thirteen enderpearls on me, I don't see why not." Stated as if conquering the world was a perfectly reasonable thing to do, like stopping by the bakery while visiting town. Worrisome.</p><p>             "You're going to need a lot more than thirteen enderpearls to conquer the world," Philza answered.</p><p>             "Fourteen enderpearls?" The piglin asked, smiling slightly. Philza realized that he was joking, and smiled himself.</p><p>             "Not even close, mate. You're gonna need full diamond armor at least. Enchantments, potions. I've never conquered the world before, unless you count the End, so even that might not be enough." He didn't really want Blade to go conquer the world, he was just trying to stall. If he could get him to grind for materials, it would be longer before he went off to kill people, and longer until he came back to kill Phil.</p><p>             (<em>Kill Phil. Kil Phil. Kill Phill. Kilza Philza. XD. Phil the Poet, doesn't know it. Phillza Killza.</em>)</p><p>             And plus, maybe this would give Phil time to help him. As murderous as the piglin seemed, Phil was also probably the only person with voices <em>he'd</em> met, either, and the only person with enough experience to help him.</p><p>             That is, if Blade wanted any help. So far, he seemed pretty bent on destruction.</p>
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